Just in case this software thing doesn't pan out...

I might just do alright in a stenopool. From the Typequick online typing test:

Number of words typed: 208
Test duration: 3 min
Speed: 69.3 words/min. (346 keystrokes/min.)
Error penalty: 8
Accuracy: 96.2%

Nerd Test

Ah, it has been a while:

Good time to get geeky

Just in time for Scott Hanselman's 2007 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Of course now I have a dozen tools to download and try out. Sigh.

[Listening to: Glenn Miller - Juke Box Saturday Night]

Recast. Rebrand. Regeekify

Has it been a year already? Amazing. Scary. Sad. So sad.

I suppose I should back up a bit.

Just under a year ago I was promoted to my level of incompetance. Not that I mind, I rather enjoy the people side of things. I knew I would miss being a techie, but hey, progress is progress.

Fortunately I was given the opportunity last May to review John Robbins' stellar new book: Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows

That helped me feel like I was keeping my fingers in the geek-pie.

By the time my reviewing duties were done I was completely out of the techie side. Again, I was fine with that. I've always felt that a geek who has any kind of leadership skills has a duty to use them. This is born of having too many managers who had no such skills.

I would occassionally geek around at home, but the motivation was already gone. Hell, I have even fell out of the habit of reading blogs.

I didn't really realize just how much I missed the techie stuff until I attended Devscovery in Redmond the week before last.

I spent most of the time in John's sessions since they interested me most, but I did get to see some useful tracks on Orcas/.NET 3.0, ASP.NET 2.0 Gems, Silverlight, WCF, ...

That was almost enough to envigorate me into getting back into it.

Of all things, the final straw happened on the drive back from Redmond as I was listening to some old podcasts that I never got around to before. As you would expect, they were about a year out of date, talking about a new bit of technology, the Composite UI Application Block.

The podcast basically outlined all of the requirements and difficulties we're having with our current product.

That's when it really hit me. I wanted to geek again. I figured I'd start nerding. I'd like to say every day or for entire days, but life (and my day job) still happens. I figure if I can do something useful at least 2-3 days per week.

I'm not planning on diving into something big. Not yet at least. Just an overall geekiness that was missing. The podcasts are a good start. I cracked out some old books of mine and started reading them. I borrowed the king of all software books from a friend at work and started reading that one too.

I just downloaded Orcas and am in the process of installing it now.

Just today I watched a view videos on Acropolis Videos which seems to be the next generation of the Composite UI Application Block

At the very least it was worth dusting off this blog, giving it a different look and new title.

I imagine I'll have some trouble deciding what to work on first, but deciding that might end up being the fun part.

[Listening to: Blind Melon - Galaxie]